Some perfumers have added olfactorily undetectable naturals into the mix to confuse the machine reading to protect their formulas. Scent companies buy their competitor’s latest release and “shoot the juice” through a gas chromatography mass spectrometer to read its chemical makeup. Within fragrance, there are brands creating “inspired by” scents emulating best-seller releases, including Nicco, Inspired By Fragrances, Fragrenza, KDJ Inspired, AF Fragrances, and ALT, using their similarity as a selling point. There is a distinction between an inspired product and a blatant copy, with many companies using the grey zone of trademark, copyright, and patent laws within the beauty industry to their advantage. Counterfeits are another subset in their own right, with £2.2 million worth of fake product being seized in the UK in 2020. This is forcing high-end brands to adopt a more innovative approach in their creation process, whether that is higher-end ingredients or unique formats and packaging. “Fast beauty” companies, which can offer a cheaper and quicker-to-market product, emulate their prestige counterparts. The immense success of minimalist skincare brands proved exceptionally popular with audiences who are more focused on ingredients and results rather than lineage or extravagant packaging. We never knowingly infringe any design copyright or patent,” the company responded. “Dupes are a recognized and celebrated part of the fashion and beauty industry, and consumers love them. There are brands that have built entire business models around duping other products like Bad Habit, and Makeup Revolution, which was publicly criticized by Kat von D for their imitation of the original Shade & Light palette with the Ultra Eye Contour Light & Shade palette back in 2017. Founded by Meg Pryde and Carolyn Kochard, the company aims to reach 30 million people by 2025. In a similar vein, Brandefy offers skincare and makeup dupes for over 400 brands via an iPhone app, with 1,300 dupe reviews submitted by users, including side-by-side swatches. The tool is free, with the company earning small affiliate commissions through purchases made through the site. 300,000 dupe searches were completed on the site in January of this year alone. Ingredients are standardized, uniting the green tea and camellia sinensis so to speak, and products are compared on a match score percentage of overall comparability. At its heart lies an algorithm two years in the making. Enter SKINSKOOL, founded by Monieka Bos and Terry Chan, which describes itself as “the ultimate dupe finder for skincare.” The search engine offer comparable alternatives for 90% of available products, and is currently comprised of a 28,000+ item-strong database. With large manufacturers producing a plethora of brands, similar formulations are inevitable, but exploring the vast product landscape can be overwhelming from a consumer perspective. What began with the countless swatches of reviewers like Temptalia and Dupethat is now being assisted by technology to become a more effortless and sophisticated process. Tech-savvy Gen Zers and consumers dealing with the financial aftermath of the pandemic will only strengthen the trend.
Some are seeking cruelty-free alternatives, the instant gratification of a similar product to bridge the restock wait for a sold-out item, or simply a replacement for a discontinued product. Driven by influencer-trusted recommendations and countless Reddit threads, as well as budget-savvy and quality-discerning consumers, dupes are a standout development of recent years.
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